We entered the start corral and I was politely informed that men had to start in corral 4. It is a women's race after all, so I said goodbye to Merle and the corral 2 group and headed back. I was pleased to find the rest of the group right when I entered corral 4. Robby, Michele, Anielka (Annie), Sara and Sandy were ready to run and a few minutes later, we were off.
Sara and Robby took off and within a mile, we lost them in the crowd up ahead. Michele, Sandy, Annie and I ran together for about 2 miles using the Galloway walk/run method until Annie decided to run without the walk breaks and we ran out ahead. Annie and I had a nice run together and kept a nice steady pace. She was running strong and ultimately at about the 6 mile mark, Annie took off on her own and I re-grouped with Sandy and Michele.
Sandy and I turned up the distraction factor and encouraged Michele to keep it up. I once heard that there are 2 universal lies told during races..."you're looking good" and "you're almost there". Sandy and I didn't lie as such, but we simply used these same phrases to encourage Michele, reaffirm how good we all looked and to comment on the relative nearness of the finish line. We were, after all, only a 5k away from the finish line.
One cool thing about this race course is that you get to run inside of the air conditioned Tropicana Field baseball stadium at about mile 11. That was a fun distraction and the soft, indoor, artificial turf felt great as we made our way around the bases and across the outfield. Michele and Sandy liked it too and showed their appreciation for the camera. We were almost there (I'm not lying) with only 2 miles left to go. Michele shared that her calves were on fire and I looked and confirmed there was no combustion and told her she needed to tell her calves to "shut up!" so she could continue on and finish her first half. We kept running, taking an occasional stretch break and sometimes extending the walk breaks, but we kept moving forward.
Michele won the mental battle today and achieved her goal of running a half marathon. Congratulations Michele! Sandy also earned an award as "Best Supporting Distracter".
Merle, thanks for organizing and nice race! Sara, thanks for getting Michele into running in the first place...way to go. Annie, thanks for coming up to do the race, it was great to see you again. Tracy, you smoked the course today! Congratulations to everyone who did the race today and helped raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society ("Go Team!").